The big clock begins to tick away on Ashe

• Published in: Las Vegas review-journal
• Main Author: Price, S L
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Las Vegas, Nev Las Vegas Review - Journal 10.04.1992
• Subjects: Ashe, Arthur
• ISSN: 1097-1645

The assumption is that he is dead. Just like Magic. Just like designer Willi Smith and actor Brad Davis, just like all the singers and mechanics and accountants and housewives and little girls who we immediately, against our better natures, label when we hear what we heard from [Arthur Ashe] on Wednesday. We label them dead. We hang a big clock on them and wait for it to tick down to nothing. No, what angered him was the fear this disease still produces, the sorry fact that his privacy was the only weapon he had to battle that fear, and the shameless attitude that today drives all mass media _ including newspapers _ to report EVERYTHING about a celebrity even after his time in the public eye has faded. What Ashe resents most is the odd contract he never signed, the one that demands a person trade even fleeting fame for a loss of control over his life. He did not want any of this, and that is his right. He said he admired the way [Magic Johnson] handled his news conference. But he feared the blind stigma and pain and rumor and winking at the office water coolers that news of this disease always causes. At one point Wednesday, Ashe's emotions overtook his cool. He rubbed his forehead repeatedly, couldn't speak for two minutes. His wife, Jeanne, had to read his written thoughts for a moment.